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Farewell, Condo Cash-Outs

When developers in Arlington, Va., threw a party 18 months ago to showcase plans for Clarendon 1021, a condominium development that had not yet been built, 3,600 prospective buyers stood in line just for the chance to book reservations to bid on the apartments.

Now, less than a year after the building opened, speculators in this and other buildings are putting dozens of units on the market at the same time, causing asking prices and profits to slip.

Of 23 investors who sold since Clarendon 1021 opened last summer, the three most recent sellers actually lost money, after paying all fees, and average profits in the building have declined since August, said Frank Borges LLosa,) owner of FranklyRealty.com.

The Great Condo Gold Rush is fading from memory and the Great Sell-Off has begun. "Money Down! Motivated Seller, Want More? Just Ask!" screamed an investor's online advertisement last week for a one-bedroom apartment in Clarendon 1021 that had never been lived in.

Over the last few years, real estate speculators looking to make a quick gain also snapped up preconstruction condos in Chicago, Miami and San Diego. With prices rising by more than 20 percent a year, short-term buyers figured that by the time the condos were ready to occupy, they could sell them without ever moving in, clearing thousands of dollars in profits.

But as more speculators look to cash out in recently hot condo markets around the country, some economists say they could put even more downward pressure on prices in those buildings where for-sale listings are swelling. In Miami, at the Jade Residences at Brickell Bay, more than 20 percent of the building's 352 units are on the market. In San Diego, about a third of the 96 units in the Alicante, a condominium that opened last fall, are listed for sale and sellers are already starting to cut asking prices.

In Donald Trump's luxury condos at 120 Riverside Boulevard in Manhattan, owners of more than one-fifth of the building's 250 units are currently marketing their apartments. With so much inventory, said Ilan Bracha, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman in New York, "the buyers are coming in, checking the best views and then they negotiate. This is the reality."

While investors made up only 9.5 percent of residential mortgages nationally in the 10 months through October, according to First American Corporation's LoanPerformance, a San Francisco mortgage data firm, the numbers are much higher in places like San Diego, where investors represented 13.5 percent of residential mortgages, and Miami, where they were 16 percent.

Hans Nordby, research strategist at Property and Portfolio Research in Boston, said those numbers underreport the real level of speculation in those markets because many buyers disguise their intentions when they get their mortgages. As those speculators flood the market, he said, they will put pressure on other sellers to cut prices, too. "A rising or sinking tide affects all boats," Mr. Nordby said.

Still, a sell-off in speculative condos is unlikely to start a widespread housing crash, because condos were more overbuilt than single-family homes during the recent boom, said Joseph Gyourko, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. But weakness in the condo market, he said, "is a consistent indicator that the great boom has really ended."

For those buyers who had dreamed of quick riches, the change in the market has come as a sobering lesson. A little over a year ago, Shabana Qureshi, a 26-year-old engineer, put deposits down on two condos in Arlington. "My friends were making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of properties," Ms. Qureshi said. "I just thought I'll take this risk now and not think about it too much, and once the time comes I can either sell it or use it depending on my needs."

She moved into a one-bedroom condo at Clarendon 1021 with hardwood floors, granite kitchen countertops and a heated pool on the roof. But having taken a pay cut with a new job, she can no longer afford the mortgage and maintenance fees, which are almost $3,000 a month.

Last week, she put the condo, for which she paid $438,000, on the market for $470,000 and plans to move into the other condo she bought in Arlington. She is selling the Clarendon condo herself to save on the real estate commission. But even if she gets her asking price, she figures she will break even after closing costs.

Having scrimped to buy at what she said she believed was the peak of the market, Ms. Qureshi said she regretted her investments. If she had to do it all over again, she said she would have spent more money on travel and a new car. "I would have been more carefree and invested once I had a family," she said.

In the last few years, speculators were drawn to real estate because of double-digit appreciation. Nationally, median condo prices increased by nearly 13 percent, to $218,200, in 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors. But earlier this month, the group, which is based in Washington, forecast a slowdown in the rate of appreciation, saying that median home prices for all housing types -- single family, townhouses, condominiums and co-ops -- would rise by only 5 percent this year.

Already, the rate of appreciation in some of the hottest markets for speculators has slowed. In San Diego, the median home price (the exact middle of all prices) rose at an annual rate of just 2.5 percent in January, compared with 20 percent a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a research firm.

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Last week, in a sign of a broader slowdown in the housing market, Toll Brothers, the luxury home builder, said orders for new homes fell by nearly 30 percent in the three months ended Jan. 31. On Monday, KB Homes also said that orders were down significantly and that more buyers were canceling contracts.

At the same time, developers are still building condos in Miami, New York and Chicago, so speculators trying to sell will also have to compete with new units coming on the market.

The slowdown will affect all sellers, of course, but speculators may be more acutely affected if they were expecting speedy profits or are paying mortgage and maintenance costs on empty apartments. In some cases, even if they rent them out, the rents will not cover their costs.

This is not the first time that condo markets have been influenced by investors. In the late 1980's, developers converted thousands of condo units in the Northeast and many of them were bought by speculators, said Karl E. Case, an economist at Wellesley College. Many of those investors, he said, ended up losing money when they sold in the early 1990's. "It was ugly," he said.

More experienced investors take a philosophical view of what they see as inevitable setbacks. R. Dawn Stahl, a lawyer in San Diego who bought two apartments in the Alicante, is now trying to sell both of them.

But in a city where there are about 6,200 condos for sale, up from about 3,100 this time last year, according to the San Diego Association of Realtors, it has been difficult to lure buyers. Ms. Stahl has yet to receive any offers, so she has already lowered her asking price on one of the listings from $650,000 to $599,000.

She paid $499,000 for that two-bedroom apartment and said she believed she would make a small profit after paying commissions and capital gains taxes. But if she cannot sell within a few months, she will rent the apartments out instead.

"I knew thatwas a risk that I took," Ms. Stahl said.

But a reason that a speculative sell-off is not likely to lead to a bursting bubble is that unlike stocks, where investors can panic and sell large volumes in a matter of hours, owners of real estate will only slash prices so far. "People resist and don't sell," said Mr. Case. "It tends to stabilize prices."

A year and a half ago, Erez Abkzer, who owns a window treatment business in New York, signed a contract for a one-bedroom condo facing the river in 120 Riverside for $850,000. "The market was booming and I decided to jump on that wagon," he said.

He closed on the apartment last month and immediately listed it for $1.1 million. He said he would rent the apartment rather than lower his price. "Otherwise it would all be in vain," Mr. Abkzer said. "I won't make money on it."

Some brokers say that speculators have unrealistic profit expectations. "I think a lot of sellers are saying I should make X percent," said Eve Thompson, an agent with Long & Foster in Fairfax, Va. "But your chances of being able to do that are as good as going to Oracle and telling them you want more for your stock."

In Miami, where there appears to be a large overhang of investor properties, sellers are still making profits, said Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors. But with the inventory of available condos having jumped from about 5,400 listings at the end of December 2004 to about 12,750 now, he said, asking prices have come down in the last three or four months. Mr. Shuffield said he was confident that there would eventually be takers for most of those condos because of the influx of buyers from Latin America and Europe as well as baby boomers from the Northeast.

But some real estate watchers say there is evidence that demand is starting to slacken in Miami. According to Michael Y. Cannon, managing director of Integra Realty Resources-South Florida, a market analyst, the volume of sales of existing condos declined by 9.6 percent in South Florida between 2004 and 2005.

For now, the bumper crop of properties is a boon to buyers. In San Diego, Tom Hinks, a 21-year-old who is looking to buy a condo downtown, has realized he can take his time.

His approach might scare some sellers. Since Mr. Hinks started looking four months ago, he has viewed 30 condos. "I've actually liked quite a few of them," he said. "But every day it seems like the prices are starting to trim down so I don't want to pay too much."

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A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2006, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: Farewell, Condo Cash-Outs; A Growing Glut of Properties Causes a Price Decline. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe